Dead Ringers (1988) and The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988)

The fourth film in our Stranger Than Fiction cycle is David Cronenberg's deep trip twin thriller, Dead Ringers (1988). Special Guest: Rob from the awesome Smoke & Mirrors PodcastDavid Cronenberg was evicted from his home after his early film, Shivers, sent shockwaves through the Toronto intelligentsia. Cronenberg has always been an outsider with a deft ability to contort himself into the good graces of the monied class over his now fifty year career. Dead Ringers is one of his most grounded works but it is also one of his most confounding. The film closely follows the journalistic essays written about the life and death of twins Stewart and Cyril Marcus. As Cronenberg himself said, “The art of The Fly was to make the fantasy absolutely real, whereas the challenge here was to make the realistic seem fantastic.” But by the end, even Jeremy Irons' spectacular performance can't quite conjure the truth that lies between the tragedy of these twin brothers.For our chaser film, we dissect Wes Craven's ballsy attempt to adapt a notorious account of real life zombies in Haiti, The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988).